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Comment by bodas | Hacker News Reader

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bodas

www.haxx.se:

"Haxx is a bunch of friends who work as software developers and hackers in Sweden"

Yep, that'll do it.

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I'm old enough to remember when "hacker" was a term of respect and awe for people with top notch technical skills.

Then again, I have come across many Americans who think "boffin" is a derogatory/negative term too...

That's probably because it's often used to describe lawyers, which have a pretty notorious representation, as a whole.

That's because the US has an insidious, persistent, and wide-spread strain of anti-intellectualism. I can think of no time prior to college outside my home when being smart was actually considered "cool". In the US, "cool" is bossing other people around, and smart people get in the way of that. It's why Presidents like GWB purposefully put on a "dopey" persona, and it works.

When I first heard "boffin" I too thought it was derogatory, because, why would someone use a slang term to describe someone as smart if it wasn't in a snarky or derogatory manner?

Americans instinctively assume “boffin” is derogatory because it’s totally absent from American parlance (iOS autocorrects it to “bogging” in US), so without the cultural context it just sounds like a goofy word, like “doofus.” In an American context, it’s not a word that sounds as if it’s being spoken with admiration, so the true meaning is counterintuitive.

But when someone says/texts me a word I do not understand, I look it up including the contexts it is used in. I do not immediately, from the sound of a word I never heard, assume someone is calling me an idiot. Doing so actually makes you an idiot.

I do not understand how it seems logical to assume that me speaking the English I have learned in school (which is the Queens English when I was young in the Netherlands) is somehow interpreted by someone with a limited vocabulary as derogatory.

I associate it with The Register. A lot of British slang sounds silly to Americans.[1] Construing it as derogatory is not an expression of American anti-intellectualism. It's the opposite - the term sounds to us like it's making fun of smart people especially due to certain writers overusing it.

[1] A parody of this: https://www.memecenter.com/fun/3500907/my-face-when-american...

Don't believe I've seen the word anywhere but El Reg for a long time.

When I first heard samples from The Warriors (years before I saw the film) I misheard "Good news, boppers" as "Good news, boffins". I have never gained employment as a radio DJ.

How old are you? By 1983 "hacker" already had negative connotations.

>vintage coder

woops, my apologies, carry on.

And here we are discussing this on HACKER NEWS :))))

Don't think I'll be adding this "social media" account information to any visa request.

then you'll be committing a felony

Who could possibly remember every forum they have created an account on?

But he remembered this one and is saying he won’t list it.

I'll probably have forgotten by the time my visa application comes around.

Better that than be denied.

Not if you don’t consider it social media. Which I don’t.

If anything , given the average level of discourse here, I’d say this is anti-social media.

Exactly, this is not social media. No felony.

It's a site where we browse published stories and then go at length having meaningful discussions. The pinnacle of social media.

According to whom? I subscribe to descriptive linguistics , and I will bet you a good sum of money that if you surveyed a representative subset of English speakers about “social media”, the single most common word in all the answers would be “friends”. Now, please don’t anyone take this personally: I appreciate the content, and I wish everyone here the very best , but I cannot with all the goodwill in the world call anyone here a friend.

It may be different for Reddit or Tumblr or whatever. But I don’t know anyone here by handle (aside from Nagle , Graham , Altman and McKenzie , but only because I know of them from the real world, and they don’t know me). There is no culture of identity at all. Signatures are actively discouraged. Etc etc , long story short: nothing social about this place. No friendships, no social structure , just discussions.

This is anathema to social media. Putting this on the list should be a felony ;)

To anyone who thinks this is ridiculous, try browsing the search results from the Google News tab:

https://www.google.com/search?q=hacker&tbm=nws

In the US, it would be unusual to find someone outside of tech circles who thinks the term "hacker" means something non-malicious.

Yeah, had the exact same thoughts here. Using names like that is just asking for trouble.

Probably true, but also ridiculous.

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